Ultrasound (US) imaging has provided useful information about the interior characteristics of an object or subject under examination. An ultrasound imaging scanner has included an input device (e.g., a transducer array of one or more transducer elements) that produces and transmits ultrasound signals and receives ultrasound data produced in response to the ultrasound data interacting with structure, hardware and/or software that processes the received ultrasound data, and a user interface that visually presents the processed data and, in some instance, allows for manipulating (e.g., rotate, zoom, pan, etc.) the visually presented processed data.
With a hand held ultrasound imaging scanner, the input device, the hardware and/or software, and the user interface have been housed in a same housing, which can be carried around by a user and utilized to scan a subject or object. In another configuration, the input device includes a probe that houses the transducer array and that connects, via a cable or the like and/or wirelessly, to a separate apparatus (e.g., a console), which includes the hardware and/or software and processes the ultrasound data and generates images. The user interface may be part of the console or separate from the console, and is used to display the images. Both of these configurations include a set of static and dedicated components, which make up the scanner.
However, with the above configurations, a customer, before or at the time of purchase of an ultrasound imaging scanner, decides on the type of imaging scanner (e.g., premium, high, medium, or low performance) via selecting input device and/or hardware and/or software options. As a consequence, if the customer purchases a low end ultrasound imaging scanner, they will not have the option of performing a high end scans with the low end ultrasound imaging scanner. Alternatively, if the customer purchases a high end ultrasound imaging scanner, they will have paid a high end price, even when the ultrasound imaging scanner is used for low end imaging.
Furthermore, with the above configurations, if a clinician has reserved the ultrasound imaging scanner for an examination, the processing hardware and/or software of that scanner will be unavailable to other clinicians, even when the reserved ultrasound imaging scanner is sitting idle and other clinicians would like to scan with available ultrasound probes that could be utilized with the hardware and/or software of the reserved ultrasound imaging scanner. Moreover, updated and/or new hardware and/or software of interest may not be supported by the purchased ultrasound imaging scanner. Thus, a customer may have to purchase another scanner in order to use the updated and/or new hardware and/or software.